E. Proulx - The Shipping News

“You wretched bastard, who are you talking to?” cried a raw high voice. The drenched man kept talking as though he hadn’t heard.

“Let’s see, there’s a crew of four. She’s cutter rigged, two thousand square foot of working sail, takes three incredibly strong men to handle the mains’l and they’re always getting these sort of hernias and ruptures. Always quitting and jumping ship. It weighs a thousand pounds. The sail, I mean. And she’s slow. Slow because she’s heavy. But very, very sturdy.” Without a pause he shouted, “I’m talking to the local press about the boat!” Nose wrinkled like a snarling dog.

“Tell them what happened in Hurricane Bob!”

The words poured down with the rain. Quoyle put his sodden notes away, stood with his wet hand over his wet chin. The white-haired man’s chest hair showed through the wet silk of his shirt like grey knots. He seemed not to notice the rain. Quoyle saw purple scars on his hands, a ruby the size of a cherry tomato on his ring finger. Could smell the liquor.

“The absolutely marvelous carving . The carving is everywhere, these incredible master carvers worked on it for nine years. All the animals known. Zebras, moose, dinosaurs, aurochs, marine iguana, wolverines, we’ve had internationally known wildlife biologists on board here to identify all the incredible species. And the birds. Utterly, utterly bizarre. It was built for Hitler as I suppose you know, but he never set foot on it. There were a thousand delays. Deliberate delays. The extraordinary Dutch Resistance.” Words spattering, drops bouncing off the deck.

“Tell them what happened in Hurricane Bob.”

“I think my dear wife is trying to get our attention,” the wet man said. “Just step in the cabin here and take a look at the interior. You’ll adore it. As ornate as the carving is outside, they really went wild in there.” He held a door open, sucked in his stomach to let them pass. Quoyle stumbled in thick carpet. A fire burned in a brick fireplace; there was a satinwood mantle inlaid with orchids worked in mother-of-peal, opal, jasper. Quoyle could not take it in, was conscious of patina, a lamp. Everything looked rare. There was something repellent in the room’s beauty, but he didn’t know what. Conscious of warping sea-damp, corrosive salt. A woman in a food-splotched bathrobe, hair the color of sewage foam, sat on the sofa. Her hands clashed in bracelets, rings. Feet stretched out, blunt purple ankles. Holding a glass cut with the initial M. Cellos sobbed, imparted a sense of drama. Quoyle saw the CD case on the coffee table, “Breakfast in Satin Sheets.” The woman put down the glass. Wet and yellow lips.

“Bayonet, tell them what happened in Hurricane Bob.” She ordered the man, did not look at Quoyle or Billy Pretty.

“Her beam is sixteen foot eleven,” said the white-haired man taking a glass marked with a J from the mantle. The ice cubes were nearly melted but he drank from it anyway. “There’s the Hoogarsjacht, and the Boeierjacht-”

“There’s the hockeyjacht and the schnockyjacht and the malarkeyjacht,” said the woman. “There’s the poppycock and the stockyblock. If you don’t tell them what happened in Hurricane Bob, then I will.”

The man drank. The hems of his trousers dripped.

Billy Pretty coaxed the woman, lest she draw blood. “Now, m’dear, just tell us what happened in Hurricane Bob. We’re anxious to hear it.”

The woman’s mouth opened but no sound came out. Fixed the man with her stare. He sighed, spoke in a weary singsong.

“Oh. Kay. Keep happiness in the fucking family. We were moored at White Crow Harbor north of Bar Harbor. That’s in Maine you know, in the United States. Way up the coast from Portland. Actually there are two Portlands, but the other is on the West Coast. Oregon. Down below British Columbia. Well, Tough Baby sort of slipped her moorings at the height of this incredible storm. The sea absolutely went mad. You’ve seen how Tough Baby is built. Utterly massive. Utterly heavy. Utterly built for punishment. Well! She smashed seventeen boats to matchsticks. Seventeen.”

The woman leaned her head back and cawed.

“Didn’t stop there. You’ve seen she’s flat bottomed. Built to go aground. After she absolutely made kindling out of White Crow’s finest afloat, the waves kept shoving her on the beach. Like some incredible battering ram. In she’d come. Wham!”

“Wham!” said the woman. The bathrobe gaped. Quoyle saw bruises on the flesh above her knees.

“Out she’d float. She got among the beach houses. These were not your butchers’ and bakers’ beach houses, no, these were some of the most beautiful houses on the coast designed by internationally known architects.”

“That’s right. That’s right!” Urged him, a dog through a flaming hoop.

“Pounded twelve beach houses, the docks and boathouses, into rubble, absolute rubble. In she’d come. Wham!”

“Wham!”

“Out she’d go. Pulverized them. Brought them down. Wilkie Fritz-Change was trying to sleep in the guest room of one of those houses-he’d been ambassador to some little eastern European hot spot and was recuperating from a breakdown at Jack and Daphne Gershom’s beach house-and he barely escaped with his life. He said later he thought they were firing cannon at him. And the most extraordinary thing was that the only damage she sustained in this completely mad and uncontrollable rampage was a cracked lee board. Not a dent, not a scratch on her.”

The woman, mouth full, shut her eyes, nodded her head. But was bored, now. Tired of these people.

Quoyle imagined the heavy vessel hurling itself onto its neighbors, pounding houses and docks. He cleared his throat.

“What brings you to Killick-Claw? A holiday voyage?”

The white-haired man eager to go on. “ Holiday? Up here? On the most utterly desolate and miserable coast in the world? Wild horses couldn’t drag me. I’d rather cruise the roaring forties off Tierra del Fuego in a garbage scow. No, we’re being reupholstered, aren’t we?” A deadly sarcasm whittled his voice to a point. “Silver here, my darling wife, insists on the services of a particular yacht upholsterer. Among thousands. Lived on Long Island, a mere seven miles from our summer place. Now we have to chase up to this godforsaken rock. All the way from the Bahamas to get the dining salon reupholstered. How can anyone live here? My god, we even had to bring the leather with us.”

From the way he said the woman’s metal name Quoyle thought it was changed from a stodgier “Alice” or “Bernice.”

“Yacht upholsterer? I didn’t know there were such things.”

“Oh absolutely. Think about it. Yachts are full of these incredible, bizarre irregular spaces, utterly weird benches and triangular tables. Thousands and thousands of dollars to upholster the dinette alone in a unique yacht like this. Everything custom fitted. And of course every boat is different. Some of the more select yachts have leather walls or ceilings. I’ve seen leather floors-remember that, Silver? Biscuit Paragon’s yacht, wasn’t it? Cordovan leather floor tiles. Unbelievable. Of course you fall down a lot.”

“What’s his name?” asked Quoyle. “A local yacht upholsterer would interest our readers.”

“Oh, it’s not a him,” said the woman. “It’s Agnis. Agnis Hamm, ‘ Hamm ’s Custom Yacht Interiors and Upholstery.’ Tiresome woman, but an absolute angel with the upholsterer’s needle.” She laughed.

Billy Pretty shifted. “Well, thank-you folks-Bayonet and Silver-”

“Melville. As in Herman Melville.” The man pouring another drink, shivering, perhaps because he was wet. They shook the man’s hand, Billy Pretty held the woman’s cold fingers. Out of the hot cabin into the rain. The wet suitcase was probably ruined.